[Philmont]: Trek 15 report

Philmont Comments / Trek 15 / Crew 710G1

Water Filter - without our MSR filter we would have had NO potable
water at Bent our first night. Rain had put so much silt in the stream as to make it
unusable (yes we tried filtering it through bandannas, letting it sit overnight, etc. Didn't work).
Our ranger had no idea what to do (other than the filter).
I've been on two treks and would never rely on just PolarPure.

Valle Vidale - wonderful country. The staff (Whitman Vega and Sealy
Canyon) was MUCH friendlier than we saw at any of the regular camps.
At Whitman Vega they hadn't even seen a crew in 3 days and seemed
truly glad to have us there.

The mountain biking was easily the most popular (with the boys) of the
staffed camp activities I've seen on either trek.
By contrast, at Dean Cow the staff put out some stuff for Advisor's
coffee, and then closed the doors and hid inside.

Beats me why the far north treks are not more popular.

However the "Low Impact" stuff seemed pretty silly considering what
the hundreds (thousands??) of cows were doing to the landscape!!
Very little the scouts could have done would have had ANY effect
compared to all those cattle....

Dan Beard - due to the fires, the campsites were all in a dirt field
with NO shade. Not nice at all.

Weather - hot, hot, hot...very little rain after the first day.
Basically nice for a couple of hours in the morning (when we did all
our hiking), then miserable until sundown.

Food - I thought they did a good job this year, though we still always had crackers left over at lunch.
We got shorted food on our last pickup (probably because Trek 15 had in previous years ended up with a Catina supper and breakfast, but not this year).
But basecamp responded to a call from the staff at Dean Cow and ran us out the missing food (Thanks!).

Heresy - Having done both Philmont (twice) and Boundary Waters, I MUCH prefer Minnesota and a canoe
(so do all the scouts in our troop who have done both).

Tom Corrigan
Troop 72 / Glenwood, MD.

Tom
mailto:thomas.corrigan@jhuapl.edu

-------------------------------------------------------
Scouting E-mail Discussion Lists @ usscouts.org
Subscribe/Unsubscribe at http://usscouts.org/lists/
Listserv Commands at http://usscouts.org/lists/lc.asp
-------------------------------------------------------
Send listserv commands to: listserv@troop47.com
Send postings to: philmont@troop47.com
List FAQ found at: http://usscouts.org/lists/faq.asp
List Administrator: philmont_owner@troop47.com
-------------------------------------------------------
As you gather around this virtual campfire with fellow
Scouts and Scouters, do your best to be trustworthy,
loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient,
cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent.
-------------------------------------------------------

 
Received on Thu Jul 24 11:00:18 2003